Complete diagnosis of a patient using a stethoscope often requires that a physician monitor low frequency and high frequency sounds associated with, for example, the heart. With respect to the heart, it is important that the physician alternate between the monitoring of low frequency and high frequency sounds so that the physician does not lose the impression from the previously heard heartbeat before the next beat is heard. Without the benefit of tunable technology, the clinician would be required to turn the chestpiece over to hear additional sounds.
The diaphragms currently used on most stethoscopes are made of two pieces, the diaphragm and the rim. The rim is used to hold the diaphragm on the chestpiece. While this construction works very well to hold the components on the chestpiece, the process for manufacturing the two piece rim/diaphragm construction requires numerous operators to produce the assembled rim/diaphragm constructions. Generally, operators are needed to manually mold the diaphragms, to manually mold the rims, to manually trim runners from diaphragms, to manually assemble the diaphragms into the rims, and to inspect all assembled products.